The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include manipulating a collection of user interface objects. In some applications, a user may want to manipulate multiple objects or portions of a chart. For example, a user may want to highlight certain wedges in a pie chart by grouping and separating them from the remainder of the wedges. A user may need to perform such manipulations on chart objects in a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a drawing application, or a website creation application (e.g., iWeb from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But existing methods for manipulating a collection of objects (e.g., portions of a chart) are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, using a sequence of mouse-based inputs to select a collection of objects (e.g., chart portions) and manipulate the selected collection of objects (e.g., chart portions) is tedious and creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.